The frosted glass

There are certain pictures one never forgets. They imprint upon the memory like something out of a museum, epic in their import, if not in their scale, where each figure acts in relation to the other, painted with all the freshness of real life. If I had to describe the effect of such pictures on the mind, I would say it is like passing a stranger on the street and accosting them because they resemble someone you know. Even once you have gone your separate ways, you cannot help but feel they are a mirror from a different life, that for a moment two tableaux had crossed, and there is a picture of you acting out a quite singular existence in a museum of another world.

These pictures are rarely encountered, it is true, unless one is looking. I recall but a few times when I have witnessed these visions, privileged to encounter the crossing of worlds, if only for a brief moment. I do not expect you to grasp completely the impression I am about to tell you, only believe that I was sure of its reality at the time, although no evidence, aside from the hazy recollection of my senses, remains.

I was at a music hall in the midst of the city. It was not my custom to frequent the theater district, but a friend had entreated me to join him for the holiday. Needless to say, in the tumult of the crowd, chandeliers, and electric lights, I quickly lost him. Desperate for an exit, I wove among the patrons, who, unperturbed by the heady atmosphere, posed like mannequins with their elbows on the edge of a theater box, peering through binoculars, or with their heads thrown back in ecstasies of joy.

Somehow, I was drawn through the fog to an immense wall of paneled glass at the back of the auditorium, which revealed itself to be a bar. As I approached, the glass reflected rows of bottles, echoing the faces of the spectators, except they had gone mute. Here, at last, some solitude.

Behind this bar, as if exiled from the madness I had just escaped, a barmaid stared into the distance, at nothing in particular, her face a wax mask. I leaned against the marble countertop and she took note of me.

“What is your pleasure, sir?” she asked, inclining her head, but not really looking at me.

“None that I could find here,” I replied.

At that, she smiled placidly. “Have a drink, then,” she said, and poured me a glass.

I stared at it for some time. I hadn’t consumed an ounce of anything strong that day, still, I did not take a sip. The stagnant air already had my head spinning and as I continued to stare, the glass frosted over, as did the glass behind the counter and eventually the barmaid, too, faded. But when I looked up again, all was normal.

“Won’t you have a drink, sir?” the barmaid asked.

I looked down. The glass was gone.

“What happened to the other?” I asked.

“But sir,” she said, “that was almost an hour ago. This is only your second trip. It would be fine to have another.”

“I think I’d rather not,” I said.

“As you wish,” she replied, and went back to staring at the crowd.

“Do you find them interesting?” I asked.

“It is my business to find them interesting,” she said.

I ran my finger around the rim of the glass, which had appeared again for some reason.

“Not to be interesting?” It was not something I would have said ordinarily.

The barmaid rested both hands on the countertop, leaned forward, and said, “Of course, that is part of it.”

She leaned back quickly and laughed.

This time I toasted her good humor and downed the glass without hesitation.

“Oh, look!” she said, and gestured at the crowd. “The show is ending.”

I turned to look and saw the crowd applauding. I turned back, hoping to say something more, but the bar was gone.

My friend appeared suddenly at my side and grabbed my arm. “What are you doing, hanging back here?” he said.

Indeed, I had been leaning into an empty doorway.

The muse

Every artist has his muse, but I, having none, was told it might do me good to seek one out. I have heard of artists who praise the moon, or the constellations, or some river of mythological significance. These are fine inspirations but all too banal, in my mind, for someone for whom there is little distinction between the mundane and the extraordinary. I might find inspiration in a beggar on the street, a puddle of mud, a flea. Speaking of fleas, there are few animals so poetic as the flea, who bounds from opportunity to opportunity with scant regard for his host, imbibing freely from the richest and poorest alike, much like the poet himself, at a friend’s table, hopping from plate to glass, and from idea to idea.

In spite of my best efforts to discover my muse, none came to my aid. The search, however, was not in vain, and I will tell you what I did find.

Beside a stream, in the shade of several willow trees, which also lined the dirt road leading to a small village in the distance, I saw an old man fishing with a makeshift rod, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a peasant’s drab attire.

He remained so still, perched on his rock, that I thought he might be napping. He had that air about him that you often see in country people, of being so absorbed in the simplicities of life, that they do not question the strangeness of existence, or its vagaries, and yet, as if born to the mysteries of the universe, unexpectedly come out with some brilliant insight into human nature or the workings of the world.

Curious, I walked over to him but he did not look up, keeping his eyes intent on the stream. But when I looked into the water, I saw no sign of life, only a gentle current sparkling over the smooth rocks in the afternoon light.

“Sir,” I ventured, “I do not think there are any fish here.”

“Ah,” he said, looking up as if roused from a dream. “Wait for it.”

Not a minute later, a fish leapt from the water, flashed its colored scales in the sun, and landed in the old man’s lap.

“And there it is,” he said.

Perhaps this was merely an amazing coincidence, but I wonder, if he knew the fish was coming, why bother with the fishing rod?